It is, most certainly, a convenience of speech to refer to “the government”, or “the state” rather than to list the people who exercise the power given to “the state”.
But you suffer from a fundamental fallacy – forgive me if I seem rude; it is not my intention – that fallacy which holds that governments and political “entities” are somehow real as are humans. These political entities are legal fictions – just as are corporations and any others of the same ilk – conveniences of speech, figures of expression, but are never expressions denoting real, actual, genuine beings or entities. There is nothing there, contained within the set of objects denoted by the word “government” or by the word “state” or by any of those figures of speech we use to label those individuals who exercise governmental powers. Nothing, that is, apart from those individuals who have been elected or appointed in accordance with the constitutions and laws duly enacted according to those constitutions which charter our governments. From that fallacy flows and arises a whole host of misconceptions and misperceptions regarding government and the people and the proper relationship between and among the people who exercise the governmental authority and the (different group of) people upon whom that authority is exercised. It is – if you will forgive me a bit of hyperbole – the root-stock of tyranny to believe in the existence of such creatures as “the government” or “the nation” or “the state”, as being separate and apart from the people, the human beings, who live there, by which term I intend to include those who exercise the governmental powers and authorities as well as their objects; namely, the rest of us. Why? Because such misperception disguises the true nature of the actions of those who exercise the governmental powers and makes discerning tyranny difficult and pointing it out nearly impossible, as one person’s “government” is another’s tyrant.